ES7 Support Will Arrive in Chrome 52, Currently Available in Chrome Canary

As always, Chrome is the first to support the latest versions of the JavaScript programming language

Catalin Cimpanu

Yesterday, Google's engineers announced they added support for almost all ES6 (ECMAScript) features in Google Chrome Canary and basic support for ES7, the upcoming iteration of the JavaScript language.

As this version of Chrome Canary (Chrome's alpha release) moves through the Beta channel, ES6 and basic ES7 support will reach the main Chrome browser distribution in version 52.

ES6, ECMAScript 6 or JavaScript 2015, was released in June 2015 and was the biggest update to the JavaScript language standard ever. Previously, the standard did not receive any updates for a period of almost four years.

When ES6 launched, the group of experts behind it announced new versions of the JavaScript standard each year, with the next, ES7 or JavaScript 2016, announced for this summer.

Ever since ES6's launch, browser makers have been hard at work adding support for the full standard. Google says that most browser vendors are now with ES6 support at above 90%.

Just a few days earlier, the Node.js project launched version 6.0 that included 93% support for the ES6 specification.

Both Chrome and Node.js are powered by the V8 project, an open source JavaScrpt engine. On April 29, the V8 team announced almost full support for the final ES6 spec and full support for the ES7 candidate draft released in February 2016.

According to Google's Chrome development calendar, users should expect the stable version of Chrome 52 around July 26th, 2016.